In individuals, hues of color can act as a stimuli for either the creation of or relief of a stress condition. Each individual reacts to a given color hue differently. The individual may react negatively toward one shade and positively toward another. In part, this may be due to the fact that human experience, especially traumatic experiences, are all encoded in color somewhere in the brain. Particular color hues represent different experiences recorded from life in memory. Clinical experience has shown that patients continually reported that the majority of their internal material, especially trauma and post-trauma stress disorder material, was reported in association with color(s). Different hues of color have been shown to either elicit the various experiences, especially the physically and emotionally painful experiences, or that certain color hues seemed to dilute, eliminate or even block the painful experiences.
Certain bodily functions are susceptible to involuntary response upon the application of external stimuli. In particular, certain body function responses can be elicited from an individual by the application of external stimuli in the form of specific color hues that are influential upon the individual in either a positive or negative way. This propensity is unique to each individual, even amongst twins and triplets.
Isolating the individual's inborn, unconscious susceptibility to a particular hue, both in negative and positive senses, is a useful tool for the person to employ when performing in a wide variety of everyday experiences.
For example, research revealed a number of years ago that anxieties (defined as "inner tension") developed along a productivity/counter-productivity inverted-U curve (.OMEGA.). The researchers showed that a certain amount of anxiety ("inner tension" and not what is commonly noted as "psychological anxiety"), is desirable and necessary to perform a task well, and that beyond a preferred range, performance actually declines. A hypothesis is that the ill effects of a person being inundated with their most negative shade can serve to heighten the amount of inner tension (anxiety) so as to create within that person an amount of anxiety beyond the preferred range with a resultant counter-productive state of performance. By employing their most positive, strengthening color hue, an individual can control the possible bombardment of negative, weakening effects of their most negative shade or shades. This end can be achieved by various means, such as tinting a protective face and/or eye shield in a sports setting, for example. In the world of academics, students and teachers can utilize the benefits of their most positive, strengthening hues for studying on a regular basis, in terms of retaining and reproducing material upon demand. The remedial processes of optimizing positive colors and reducing or eliminating the negative ones, can be applied to performances in other areas that cause stress and strain, such as (1) the world of work: for example, computer fatigue; continual and repetitive operation of machinery; performance in front of bright, offending lights; (2) the arenas of emotional disturbances: such as post trauma stress disorder, anxiety, and/or panic attacks, phobias, addictions, eating disorders; and (3) the realm of concentration/attention span disturbances: such as attention deficit disorder and performance of precision/exacting tasks, seizures, headache syndromes, and gastro-intestinal tract disorders.
There are many other areas where it is desirable to isolate those hues that will provide optimal positive, strengthening stimuli to an individual's visual system and identify those shades which will have a negative weakening effect. These areas can be psychotherapeutic or non-therapeutic (that is, solely cosmetic or commercial in nature).
Prior art devices proposed in an attempt to identify colors which may prove optimal to an individual for one reason or another, include the imagescope described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,327,712, issued May 4, 1982 to Frenkel et al; and, an associated device to be used in combination with an imagescope as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,064,410, issued Nov. 12, 1991 to Frenkel et al.